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> people worried that the electric push button would make human skills atrophy. They wondered if such devices would seal off the wonders of technology into a bl

> people worried that the electric push button would make human skills atrophy. They wondered if such devices would seal off the wonders of technology into a black box: “effortless, opaque, and therefore unquestioned by consumers.”

SilasX 4y ago
Any reason you couldn't have made the point explicit the first time? Were you worried that others' reading skills would atrophy if they only needed to read 100 words to get the point, and so you posted 400 words while still missing a critical block of 50?
- plurinshael 4y ago
  Lighten up, Francis.
  - NIL8 4y ago
    I spotted this gem of a comment while scrolling and had to scroll back up to be sure I hadn't misread it. It's both hilarious and pertinent! Well said, "Big Toe."
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  I think the reference is cliché to the point that I usually hate to see it, but did understand the original post's intent in context (that is, the context provided by skimming the linked article to which the post is a reaction) without issue. It didn't even occur to me that it was anything other than plain.
  - dwringer 4y ago
    For this reason I actually thought it was a good comment. I've seen the reference come up almost without fail in discussions like this, but I've never seen it so elaborated.
  - SilasX 4y ago
    It has a block of text, whose purpose isn't clear at the beginning [1], and requires you to read the entire comment, in its thick prose, and the article in order to understand, and even then you have to guess which point its referring, but could be wrong because cercatrova didn't actually own one. Here is how I would have done the comment: --- >people worried that the electric push button would make human skills atrophy. They wondered if such devices would seal off the wonders of technology into a black box: “effortless, opaque, and therefore unquestioned by consumers.” This reminds me of Socrates's story about how people in the ancient world worried about the atrophy from being able to use writing: >>"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise." Full context (Plato's Phaedrus 14, 274c-275b): https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0174%3Atext%3DPhaedrus%3Apage%3D274 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... --- Advantages: A) Gets right to the point (so that if you already know the point, you can skip it.) B) Saves everyone the time and effort of reading thick prose, most of which includes references to historical figures C) Still quotes the relevant part. D) Still contains a quick link to the rest of the context that cercatrova considered oh-so-important to add. E) Contains a citation that can be googled in case the link goes dead. F) Doesn't take a big wall of text. But yes, it does have downsides: it G) takes actual communication effort, H) owns a specific point, and I) doesn't make cercatrova look cryptically wise. If those are your desiderata, then yeah, I agree he did it right, and everyone was right to vote it to the top of the discussion. Can you elaborate on what you think we gain from making everyone read 6x as much with no indication of what the actual point is? [1] I'm including people who weren't already aware of the quote, though you don't seem to think their vote matters here.
    - fredrb 4y ago
      That’s usually how human conversations go. It’s not always efficient. You should try it sometime.
- lostgame 4y ago
  Y’know…it was clear that the original commenter was telling a story. If you didn’t want to read it, you could’ve stopped. Nobody was making you. :) There are plenty of other comments, and I found this one fascinating; myself. Maybe it’s just that some of us still have patience - and don’t need things condensed into sound bites or summations for our convenience.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  Yes
- noobermin 4y ago
  I have to say, this post if anything is a meta argument that Plato was actually right. Behold the impatience and inattentiveness to read a short section that literally takes two minutes to parse. The internet has made people far to impatient.
  - eru 4y ago
    Impatient people always existed.
  - SilasX 4y ago
    No, Plato wasn't right that you should make people take 2 minutes to listen to your point when you could have made it in ten seconds. And not that the personal attack was warranted, but: I'm happy to read dense material; I'd just like to know if it is worth my time first. By making me read all of the material first before I know what point it's building to, and not knowing the relevant to the article, you've made me take a lot of time just to learn that you were making a point I already agreed with. Is wasting others' time a virtue, in your mind?
- serf 4y ago
  >Were you worried that others' reading skills would atrophy if they only needed to read 100 words to get the point, and so you posted 400 words while still missing a critical block of 50? If you truly think that's why people write long-form prose then I totally understand your ire towards it -- but unfortunately that idea is so far away from reality that I'm afraid I don't understand at all. At the risk of being an inaccurate arm-chair psychoanalyst I think that your anger and aggression towards it comes from a fear of missing out. Rather than skipping the things that are written in a style that you disagree with you read them anyway -- upset the entire time that the prose isn't written how you want it to be -- and then vent your frustrations by accusing the author or post writer of machinations that simply do not exist. No one is worried about your reading skills. I initially had the urge to meet that sarcasm (is it sarcasm? hard to tell) with more of my own ("Oh yeah, you figured it out, that's exactly what the author meant to do") until I considered that perhaps you would misunderstand that as acceptance from peers. My perspective in a few words : Some things don't compress. Long-form has a place in my life for that reason.
  - cercatrova 4y ago
    Indeed, I did not understand the aggressiveness either, in both their comment before I quoted the article as a reason, and in their comment afterwards. I too wanted to match it with sarcasm, but I stopped myself for the same reason as you did.
  - SilasX 4y ago
    >If you truly think that's why people write long-form prose then I totally understand your ire towards it Woosh? That was a tongue-in-cheek reference back to the original Socrates/Plato quote worrying about thinking skills atrophying due to writing. For someone so married to the idea of being a deep thinker, who rigorously and patiently reads thick prose, you sure missed an obvious reference. >At the risk of being an inaccurate arm-chair psychoanalyst I think that your anger and aggression There's no need to psychoanalyze. Cercatrova took ~400 words, most of which were unnecessary, to bring up an idea, and not even make clear what part of the article it was related too. That's a really wasteful form of communication, and I pointed out why, then later on showed a better way to do it. Most people would appreciate being told how they could communicate an idea better, and if there's someone here with a toxic personality, I would say it's the one who's trying to medicalize it and act like it's some kind of mental illness, rather than a request for common courtesy. If you want to ascribe a personality trait to me, how about "distaste at people who waste others' time making their ideas obscure through poor communication", and I have to ask -- why don't you have that personality trait as well? Do you not like when others understand your ideas? Are you worried they'll better see the flaws?
- lostgame 4y ago
  Let’s just cut ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ down to 40 minutes, because - why couldn’t Kubrick just compress all that slow motion classical music stuff down to the actual point of the movie? ‘Humanity makes first contact. They send out a spaceship to the source. The AI on the ship becomes sentient and murderous. One man escapes, and arrives at the source. He exits his 3 dimensional existence and enters a psychedelic-esque state whereupon he transcends humanity as we know it.’ Okay, now nobody needs to see ‘2001’ again - ever! Symphonies - what the fuck? Why couldn’t Mozart have just written a 3 1/2 minute long pop song instead of wasting all of our time? What an asshole! Yet we celebrate this music as some of the greatest of all time? Shame on us. Shakespeare? Ugh. They fall in love. Their love isn’t approved. They kill themselves. Get to the point! You’re totally right. There’s absolutely no reason for us to do anything but compress all information into Tweet-level hyperchunks. :)
  - SilasX 4y ago
    What is that responding to? I wasn't opposed to reading or referencing the full text. My criticism was that it should have led with the core point, so people know what point you're making before they dive into the long exposition of it. What you're advocating here is basically saying that people should never read the description of a movie, or know anything about it, before starting on it, because that's mainly what my edit change. Do you really believe that? Furthermore, HN isn't a movie. If you're going to take two and half hours to make a point, just don't bother with posting.

SilasX 4y ago

Any reason you couldn't have made the point explicit the first time? Were you worried that others' reading skills would atrophy if they only needed to read 100 words to get the point, and so you posted 400 words while still missing a critical block of 50?

plurinshael 4y ago
Lighten up, Francis.
- NIL8 4y ago
  I spotted this gem of a comment while scrolling and had to scroll back up to be sure I hadn't misread it. It's both hilarious and pertinent! Well said, "Big Toe."
yamtaddle 4y ago
I think the reference is cliché to the point that I usually hate to see it, but did understand the original post's intent in context (that is, the context provided by skimming the linked article to which the post is a reaction) without issue. It didn't even occur to me that it was anything other than plain.
- dwringer 4y ago
  For this reason I actually thought it was a good comment. I've seen the reference come up almost without fail in discussions like this, but I've never seen it so elaborated.
- SilasX 4y ago
  It has a block of text, whose purpose isn't clear at the beginning [1], and requires you to read the entire comment, in its thick prose, and the article in order to understand, and even then you have to guess which point its referring, but could be wrong because cercatrova didn't actually own one. Here is how I would have done the comment: --- >people worried that the electric push button would make human skills atrophy. They wondered if such devices would seal off the wonders of technology into a black box: “effortless, opaque, and therefore unquestioned by consumers.” This reminds me of Socrates's story about how people in the ancient world worried about the atrophy from being able to use writing: >>"For this invention will produce forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it, because they will not practice their memory. Their trust in writing, produced by external characters which are no part of themselves, will discourage the use of their own memory within them. You have invented an elixir not of memory, but of reminding; and you offer your pupils the appearance of wisdom, not true wisdom, for they will read many things without instruction and will therefore seem to know many things, when they are for the most part ignorant and hard to get along with, since they are not wise, but only appear wise." Full context (Plato's Phaedrus 14, 274c-275b): https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0174%3Atext%3DPhaedrus%3Apage%3D274 https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext... --- Advantages: A) Gets right to the point (so that if you already know the point, you can skip it.) B) Saves everyone the time and effort of reading thick prose, most of which includes references to historical figures C) Still quotes the relevant part. D) Still contains a quick link to the rest of the context that cercatrova considered oh-so-important to add. E) Contains a citation that can be googled in case the link goes dead. F) Doesn't take a big wall of text. But yes, it does have downsides: it G) takes actual communication effort, H) owns a specific point, and I) doesn't make cercatrova look cryptically wise. If those are your desiderata, then yeah, I agree he did it right, and everyone was right to vote it to the top of the discussion. Can you elaborate on what you think we gain from making everyone read 6x as much with no indication of what the actual point is? [1] I'm including people who weren't already aware of the quote, though you don't seem to think their vote matters here.
  - fredrb 4y ago
    That’s usually how human conversations go. It’s not always efficient. You should try it sometime.
lostgame 4y ago
Y’know…it was clear that the original commenter was telling a story. If you didn’t want to read it, you could’ve stopped. Nobody was making you. :) There are plenty of other comments, and I found this one fascinating; myself. Maybe it’s just that some of us still have patience - and don’t need things condensed into sound bites or summations for our convenience.
cercatrova 4y ago
Yes
noobermin 4y ago
I have to say, this post if anything is a meta argument that Plato was actually right. Behold the impatience and inattentiveness to read a short section that literally takes two minutes to parse. The internet has made people far to impatient.
- eru 4y ago
  Impatient people always existed.
- SilasX 4y ago
  No, Plato wasn't right that you should make people take 2 minutes to listen to your point when you could have made it in ten seconds. And not that the personal attack was warranted, but: I'm happy to read dense material; I'd just like to know if it is worth my time first. By making me read all of the material first before I know what point it's building to, and not knowing the relevant to the article, you've made me take a lot of time just to learn that you were making a point I already agreed with. Is wasting others' time a virtue, in your mind?
serf 4y ago
>Were you worried that others' reading skills would atrophy if they only needed to read 100 words to get the point, and so you posted 400 words while still missing a critical block of 50? If you truly think that's why people write long-form prose then I totally understand your ire towards it -- but unfortunately that idea is so far away from reality that I'm afraid I don't understand at all. At the risk of being an inaccurate arm-chair psychoanalyst I think that your anger and aggression towards it comes from a fear of missing out. Rather than skipping the things that are written in a style that you disagree with you read them anyway -- upset the entire time that the prose isn't written how you want it to be -- and then vent your frustrations by accusing the author or post writer of machinations that simply do not exist. No one is worried about your reading skills. I initially had the urge to meet that sarcasm (is it sarcasm? hard to tell) with more of my own ("Oh yeah, you figured it out, that's exactly what the author meant to do") until I considered that perhaps you would misunderstand that as acceptance from peers. My perspective in a few words : Some things don't compress. Long-form has a place in my life for that reason.
- cercatrova 4y ago
  Indeed, I did not understand the aggressiveness either, in both their comment before I quoted the article as a reason, and in their comment afterwards. I too wanted to match it with sarcasm, but I stopped myself for the same reason as you did.
- SilasX 4y ago
  >If you truly think that's why people write long-form prose then I totally understand your ire towards it Woosh? That was a tongue-in-cheek reference back to the original Socrates/Plato quote worrying about thinking skills atrophying due to writing. For someone so married to the idea of being a deep thinker, who rigorously and patiently reads thick prose, you sure missed an obvious reference. >At the risk of being an inaccurate arm-chair psychoanalyst I think that your anger and aggression There's no need to psychoanalyze. Cercatrova took ~400 words, most of which were unnecessary, to bring up an idea, and not even make clear what part of the article it was related too. That's a really wasteful form of communication, and I pointed out why, then later on showed a better way to do it. Most people would appreciate being told how they could communicate an idea better, and if there's someone here with a toxic personality, I would say it's the one who's trying to medicalize it and act like it's some kind of mental illness, rather than a request for common courtesy. If you want to ascribe a personality trait to me, how about "distaste at people who waste others' time making their ideas obscure through poor communication", and I have to ask -- why don't you have that personality trait as well? Do you not like when others understand your ideas? Are you worried they'll better see the flaws?
lostgame 4y ago
Let’s just cut ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ down to 40 minutes, because - why couldn’t Kubrick just compress all that slow motion classical music stuff down to the actual point of the movie? ‘Humanity makes first contact. They send out a spaceship to the source. The AI on the ship becomes sentient and murderous. One man escapes, and arrives at the source. He exits his 3 dimensional existence and enters a psychedelic-esque state whereupon he transcends humanity as we know it.’ Okay, now nobody needs to see ‘2001’ again - ever! Symphonies - what the fuck? Why couldn’t Mozart have just written a 3 1/2 minute long pop song instead of wasting all of our time? What an asshole! Yet we celebrate this music as some of the greatest of all time? Shame on us. Shakespeare? Ugh. They fall in love. Their love isn’t approved. They kill themselves. Get to the point! You’re totally right. There’s absolutely no reason for us to do anything but compress all information into Tweet-level hyperchunks. :)
- SilasX 4y ago
  What is that responding to? I wasn't opposed to reading or referencing the full text. My criticism was that it should have led with the core point, so people know what point you're making before they dive into the long exposition of it. What you're advocating here is basically saying that people should never read the description of a movie, or know anything about it, before starting on it, because that's mainly what my edit change. Do you really believe that? Furthermore, HN isn't a movie. If you're going to take two and half hours to make a point, just don't bother with posting.